Tartan
by A. X. Zanier
Summary: Darien has a surprise for Alyx. As usual things do not go as planned.


Title: _Tartan_

Author: A. X. Zanier

Status: Complete

Rating: PG-13

Fandom: _ The Invisible Man_ (SciFi, 2000), The Pretender (NBC 1996)

Disclaimer: a) The characters and basic story ideas of _The Invisible Man_ are the property of others including, but not limited to Matt Greenberg, Studios USA, Stu Segall Productions and NBC Universal. b) The characters and basic story ideas of _The Pretender _are the property of others including, but not limited to 20th Century Fox Television, MTM Entertainment, Mitchell/Van Sickle Productions, and NBC Studios. Any additional characters or story ideas are mine. I make no money from this intellectual exercise. c) This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any opinions or views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the author and are used for story-telling purposes only.

Sequel/Series: _Leverage/The Ghost in the Crowd _AU

Timeline: Several months after Sunday Morning. There is a story that falls in between the two that has not yet been written.

Spoilers: Probably. Does it really matter after all these years?

A/N: Started as a WWoMB challenge fic.

New Prompts/Challenges for Writers Posted on WWOMB for Saturday June 08, 2013

**Title: **authors choice #448 - bang, bang...I love you - any pairing - any length: start with "There was a loud bang" and end with "I love you!"

**User issuing challenge: **peja

...

_**Tartan**_

_**...**_

There was a loud _bang_, a long pregnant pause then a set of several smaller bangs, which was then followed by voluble cursing.

Alyx lifted her hands from the keyboard and cocked her head slightly to the side, focusing her attention on Darien who had supposedly been in the upstairs guest room for the last hour. From him she felt irritation, frustration, but no real pain, which meant, physically, he was most likely unharmed. Still, it never hurt to be cautious. _*D? Everything all right?*_

That the sigh could be felt mentally meant he hoped she hadn't noticed him trying to slam something through the ceiling above her head. _*Yeah. Only thing damaged is my pride... and your wood floors,*_ he informed her feeling more than a touch sheepish.

*_My wood floors?*_ she questioned in confusion. Granted, technically, all the woods floors were hers... and his. So why would he say... "Oh crap," she muttered aloud, getting to her feet and rushing upstairs, she skidded to halt in her bare feet just inside the doorway of the master bedroom... not the guest bedroom in which he had said he'd be working, but where the series of thuds had indeed emanated from. Her eyes went wide and she slapped a hand over in mouth in reaction to the sight before her.

Darien stood over by the French doors that led out to the balcony, one of the lone areas that had been spared in the expansive room. The carefully placed six-foot wide painting cloth along the far right wall had done little to protect the deep mahogany colored wood from damage. The nearly eight foot ladder had fallen _away_ from the drop cloth, taking multiple shades of paint with it and splattering them across the entire surface of the floor. Greens, golds, blues and browns now adorned the deep-colored wood like some piece of modern art.

Darien saw the look on her face and clearly misinterpreted it. "Oh, baby, I am so sorry. I... I just wanted to surprise you." He looked to be in fear of his life and sounded beyond apologetic.

Alyx dropped her hand to show that she was laughing and not about to turn him into a pile of ash where he stood. "Wha... what happened?" she asked once she'd gotten ahold of herself.

Darien looked confused, as if expecting to be berated for what had most certainly been an accident. "You're not mad?"

With some extremely careful footwork, she crossed the floor, without smearing a drop of paint, went up on her toes and bit him on the chin, causing him to shiver in reaction. "No, not mad, but I would like to request permission to cheat."

When they'd decided to make a few changes, the first of which had been to tear out all of the godawful wall to wall carpeting that had led to the discovery of the gorgeous and real wood flooring beneath throughout the entire house, and not just the master bedroom, they had agreed to do it without using her abilities. Yes, more work, but they would be doing it together. So all the walls were being repainted by hand, the programming all being done via a keyboard and not just shoved into being with her mind. Granted they'd had the floors redone by a professional, who had been worth every penny, and there had been a lot of them, but most of the real work had been done by the two of them alone.

The master bedroom had been completed, or so she had thought, as they had planned to begin moving their belongings in as soon as she had the security system up and running. "Well?"

"Yes, you may cheat. Please. This was not part of the plan." The guilt that he felt surprised her. Yes, she loved these floors, but they were just floors and could be fixed with ease.

"D, it's not that big a deal," she assured him even as she reached out with her mind to the paint splattered everywhere. She didn't need to look, kept her eyes focused on Darien who stared over her head at the seemingly impossible feat she performed with such ease. She gathered up all the paint, separating the colors, each into a ball that she held in the air, as she made certain to seek out all that had found itself flung into locations they should not be. Darien had gone for distance; some of the paint making it's way onto the far wall, which was a fair twenty feet away. The master bedroom was frickin' huge to quote one slightly jealous Bobby Hobbes. She then righted the ladder; setting the smaller pots of paint onto the drop cloth, instead of the can holder from which they had fallen. Why risk it happening again, right?

"You have no idea how cool this is to watch," Darien stated in obvious awe. Good to know her abilities could still wow the crowd when she wanted them to.

"Oh, I might have some clue," she told him as she moved the floating balls of color to their respective cans and returned the paint to its proper place. She turned about to see her beautiful floors, once again pristine and smooth in the late afternoon sunshine coming in through the generously oversized windows. "Now, do I get to know why you were in here finger painting?"

He ducked his head, color rising to his cheeks. "I wanted to surprise you, but when I backed up to admire my handiwork I hit the ladder and... You got to clean up the mess."

She stepped away from him, her eyes meeting his for a moment before lifting upwards. Darien was tall, even by average height standards, but the ceilings in their bedroom were twelve feet high at their lowest, the ceiling was vaulted towards the peak, complete with skylights that allowed an immense amount of natural sunlight to brighten the room - with powered shades for those days one wished to sleep in, of course - and allow the stars to be seen at night. The one wall, the wall the drop cloth lay in front of was all interior, a solid blank they were thinking of putting bookshelves on as they had a massive collection of books between the two of them.

Darien had apparently decided to add some artwork along the upper edge of the wall. An intricate Celtic knot in the aforementioned colors that had been dumped onto her flooring. He'd only completed about half the painting, but the carefully drawn lines were complete. Little wonder he'd said he'd take care of everything up here. The design for the elongated knot had clearly been based on the one etched into the canopy of her... their bed, though the colors were a new and startling touch.

"It's quite lovely, but I'm not certain why you went to all this trouble."

He might have looked sheepish, hands in his pockets, head tipped down to stare at the toe twisting on the floor, but he felt oddly prideful, which was weird to put it mildly. "Well, I did some research and determined with reasonable certainty that those colors are your family tartan."

"My family... Wait? What?"

Darien lifted his head grinning, always thrilled on those rare occasions he managed to surprise her. "Yeah, I made some calls to your brothers, did some research, discreetly I promise, and tracked down the MacTierney colors. Patrick said there used be a tapestry or something at the house you guys grew up in. Mike said it's in storage."

Alyx blinked, damn, she hadn't thought about that ugly rug in years. She hadn't realized it had any meaning other than belonging to her great-grand parents. "Okay, so I have a family tartan, doesn't explain this..." she waved at his painting project, feeling oddly touched he'd gone too all this effort.

He turned away for a long moment and she had to resist the temptation to read him beyond what she could not help but feel, which currently included dismay. He'd gone to all this effort; wanting to surprise her with something special and here she was being utterly clueless and ruining it. "I wanted to make sure you knew your family is part of this... of us, even though we're hoping to make our own. Your kids will know about all this in a few years, I want them to feel this is as much their home as the one they live in now."

Alyx was stunned... in a good way. She knew that Darien cared about her, cared about her family, her children especially even though he'd had very little interaction with them. She knew he had taken it upon himself to keep an eye on them, make certain they were all right, which she appreciated even more now that The Centre had become involved in her life. She had forgotten that he, for maybe the first time in his life, looked past the moment and to the future. It wasn't about the next score, but what he wanted next out of life and it turned out to be her on every level.

She walked over to him, grasped his face in her hands and pulled him down so she could kiss him without having to go up on her toes. She made certain to _not_ share her feelings with him so that when she stepped back he looked at her in confusion. "We are moving in here tonight. I don't care if we have to camp out on air mattresses, I am not spending another night in separate apartments."

Darien blinked, then smiled hugely, clearly liking the idea. "But we haven't finished the upgrades," he just had to point out.

Alyx stuck out her tongue at him. "So? Most of our belongings won't fill half of the space we have. We'll shuffle rooms for the time being. Provided..." She let the sentence hang and waited for the _I knew there'd be a catch_ look to appear on his face, which it did after a moment.

"Provided what?"

"Provided you let me cheat on the programming for the security. It's the only must before we move in officially. I can have it up and running in a couple of hours, versus a couple of days. You can cook like a man on the grill tonight if you wish." She tossed the last in as an obvious bribe since he'd been crowing about the built in grill since they'd first looked at the place.

"Is that all?" She nodded. "Then hell yes." He scooped her up and swung her around, damn near flinging her feet into the ladder and knocking it over again. They ended up out on the balcony that overlooked the pool, backyard, and in the distance their tiny slice of the bay this tiny community resided on. Their very own beach right behind their house... home.

He pulled her in close for a most thorough kiss, though this time she made certain to share all she felt with him. How much she wanted to do this, to be with him here in their home, to begin their lives together, no matter the challenges they may face in the future. When she pulled back to look up at him she knew she needed to make this one of those good memories, to savor this moment, and hold onto it close, to allow it to overshadow those that had been used to break her spirit. "I love you."

And he, wise man that he had learned to be, said nothing, treasuring the words instead of making them smaller than they were by responding. Instead he sighed deeply and buried his face against the side of her neck, prepared to hold her like this for as long as she wished.

_._

_._

_finis_


End file.
